As part of building up some supplementary images as a background for the forthcoming online walking/photography exhibition at Encounters Gallery I have been photographing in a small patch of bushland in Waitpinga. I needed a contrast to the Littoral Zone images.
bushland, Depledge Rd, Waitpinga
The roadside vegetation that I see whilst walking the back country roads is limited in terms of photographic subject matter. So I have been wandering and exploring this bushland on both the early morning with Kayla and at the late afternoon poodlewalks with Maleko.
June 1 dawned with cold, blustery south westerly winds, dark clouds, driving rain and big seas. Winter had arrived on cue.
This cloud formation is what greeted Kayla and myself on the early morning poodlewalk on June 1. We hugged the northern edge of Rosetta Head to escape the 50 km south-westerly wind. I was looking across Encounter Bay to Goolwa and to the Coorong.
winter
The weather was too wild to continue to the top of Rosetta Head and down the southern side, so we turned away from the coast, which is where we normally walk and photograph, jumped in the car and drove inland to seek some protection from the gusty, driving wind. We walked up and down Depledge Rd for about 30-40 minutes before I decided to return to exploring the bush “reserve” that ran adjacent to the western side of Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. We had had walked within this “reserve” a few days before.
In the last week or so I have returned to walking along the Waitpinga section of the Heysen Trail in the morning with Kayla and in the afternoon with Maleko. This section of the Heysen Trail is a narrow strip of scrub or bush that runs between two roads, and it is bounded by two grazing paddocks (cattle and sheep). The narrow strip is a corridor that is quite dense in parts.
The mornings and afternoons have been overcast with minimal wind, and this has allowed me to do some black and white film photography of tree subjects that I had photographed in colour a couple of years ago. I started the scoping here.
Whilst walking to and from the photo sites on both the morning and the afternoon poodlewalks I made some exploratory/scoping studies of different subject matter in the scrub/bush for some future film photography. This is an example:
branch, Heysen Trail
I would have walked past this branch on the edge of the path of the Heysen Trail many times without ever having seen it. I only saw it this time because Kayla went exploring in the undergrowth behind the branch. I quickly made a snap and moved on.
The Xmas break is over for this summer-time. The holiday crowds have left vacationing along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula during the extended school holidays, and returned to work in Adelaide. The schools are back and the photographers have gone.
Over the Xmas break I continued to photograph in the early morning whilst walking with Kayla. I focused on low key macro photography before the light became too bright and contrasty. The photography is hand held and quick. The conditions are not suitable for slow large format photography.
quartz + salt, Petrel Cove
Currently, the mornings start cool, the days heat up and reach their zenith around 5 pm but, unlike drought damaged inland regions, the temperature usually drops at night. With the crowds gone, the beaches along the coast are quiet during the week, and we often have them to ourselves in the early morning around dawn and sunrise. We now have the space to be in the moment and see the transient and ephemeral nature of life on the coast. Continue reading “summer-time + impermanence”
The weather along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the Xmas break was surprisingly cool; surprisingly so, given the record breaking heatwave across central and south-eastern Australia.
Despite having several friends stay with us in and around the Xmas break, it was a quiet holiday for me. I’d sprained my right shoulder one morning just before Xmas day whilst helping Suzanne to make the bed.
bark abstract, Encounter Bay
The shoulder became inflamed and, as it involved shoulder bursitis pain, I was obliged to rest the right arm in a sling for a couple of days over Xmas before seeing a physiotherapist late in the Xmas/New Year Day week. I was given a set of exercises to do for a week to strengthen the strained shoulder muscle.
Then the injury would be reassessed. The prognosis was that it could take 2-8 weeks to heal, depending on how I responded to the various exercises. I’ve had good days and bad days so far. Continue reading “the Xmas break 2018”
I have been going through my old archives from a PC that died many years ago. The images had been backed up on Lacie hard disc which also crashed, and they were eventually recovered by a tech specialist. The 13,000 images are all jumbled up, there are many repetitions, others are jpegs, whilst large numbers are corrupted and so useless.
This is one rescued image from along the coast west of Petrel Cove, and it was made around 2008 when Suzanne and I were coming down to Encounter Bay for the weekends. We were living in Adelaide’s CBD then, and we were both working full time.
I am now back home after a hectic period of travelling during March. There were a couple of trips to Wellington to photograph around Wellington quickly followed by one to attend Photobook/NZ. After that I made a couple of trips to Swan Hill in Victoria for the Mallee Routes 2018 exhibition.
We are now easing back into our daily routines and poodlewalks at Encounter Bay. The Easter holidays are a few days away. That means huge crowds in the coastal towns and along the coastal walks.
seaweed strand, Petrel Cove
It is autumn in South Australia. The light has softened, there is now more in the way of morning cloud cover, the winds have eased, and the temperatures are mild (in the mid 20’s C) . It is still very dry, as there has been no rain. Continue reading “back home”
We–Suzanne, Maleko, Kayla and I — did some walks together between, and just after, the Xmas-New Year period. We wanted to avoid the Xmas crowds gathering around the coastal beaches, and I had used google maps to look for possible ways for us to walk along Hindmarsh River. Most of them turned out to be duds. There were just no walking trails. It was mostly all private property.
One of the afternoon walks that we did early in the new year (2018) was one along the trail of the Hindmarsh River, which ran adjacent to the old McCracken residential development.
Hindmarsh River trail
It had been years since we walked along the upper section of the Hindmarsh River Walk . On the day we walked the river was low, with little in the way of a flow, and we noticed that there had been some planting on the old flood plain, which was now a park with a playground. Continue reading “afternoon walks”
One of my memories of the early morning walks that I used to do in the last months of Ari’s life in 2017 was one where I ‘d walk with him along Jetty Rd. On these occasions Suzanne would take Kayla and Maleko up and over Rosetta Head, and I would walk with Ari down to the beach, then along Jetty Rd, which runs around the foot of Rosetta Head.
Jetty Rd runs from Whalers Convention Centre to the little jetty at the northern side of Rosetta Head, and as it is easy walking, it was suitable for Ari. The jetty is a favourite of the recreational fishermen and we’d alway meet someone fishing from the jetty early in the morning.
cactus leaves, Jetty Rd,
It was a slow walk to and from the jetty, and Ari and I would often hang around an old palm tree and cactus on our way back. I would take a few photos with the little Olympus XZ-1 that we had purchased for Suzanne to use on her various walks. Continue reading “memories”
I have decided to upgrade the poodlewalks blog from the free WordPress blog platform that I have been using for so long to more of a website platform with its own blog and galleries. The galleries will bring the offshoots or spinoffs from poodlewalks that are currently on various standalone Posthaven blogs–abstractions, the trees series, and the Littoral Zone. The blog will continue the traditional poodlewalks format with the website titled known as poodlewalks.
flowers, memorial
My reason is that a lot of my daily photography —outside specific projects like Mallee Routes—centres around poodlewalks. I am walking twice a day –in the morning and afternoon–with each of the walks around an hour’s duration. If the light is right, then the walks are 1.5-2 hours in duration. Often I go back and reshoot for the Fleurieuscape book and portfolio. The new format will bring all the work around poodlewalks together.
